Flashback Friday

Growing up we heard some of the exploits, legal or otherwise, of Herb and his college fraternity buddies.   His college career was interrupted by World War II and his service in the Navy and the Greatest generation.  So when he returned certain excesses could be excused.   

One of his stories was the fraternity needed a Christmas tree and he remembered there was one in the city park in Seaton, so he and his friends drove over, hooked it with a chain, and drove it out of town.  He liked to tell of the commotion it caused when he came back for a weekend shortly after this stunt.

Another time he told of hopping on a train around Monmouth and it travelled through Seaton, back when they had trains going through town.  The tracks went right by the grain elevator his Dad owned and as the train rolled by, his dad came out of the weigh house looked up and saw Herb.  I guess the story went that his Dad went back in and in a shocked voice said to the farmers and staff inside, "I think that was my son on top of the train."  

That train would end up somewhere in Iowa, and I would have liked to have been privy to that conversation on the way home, since it was Dad who had to go over and pick him up.

This is a stunt that I'm almost certain I heard about growing up.  Apparently Herb and his frat brothers placed this car on the Wallace Hall building steps shortly before graduation.

Here is Herb with another college friend and likely fellow felon.  Herb, as if taunting the local authorities wears his fraternity T-shirt, the Alpha Tau Omegas, which, as I understand it, were the Hellraisers of Monmouth College.  What that means, is they were not likely to have to worry too much about valedictorian speeches or invited over to the President's house for lemonade on Sunday afternoon.

A student or more likely fellow fraternity brother posing next to the old junker they picked up and placed in front of the building's front door.

I have no idea what Wallace Hall was in 1947, but I am assuming it was the, or one of the main, buildings on campus.  Again, I fond it interesting the lives or our parents before they became our parents.  It is the stuff of family stories, passed down from generation to generation, and now passed along to you.